ANGELINA JOLIE
Part Two

Angelina landed her first starring role in Hackers, portraying the only girl in a group who can lay claim to the status of elite hacker. Jolie married her Hackers co-star, Jonny Lee Miller, in May 1996, where she wore black rubber pants and a white T-shirt with Jonny's name written on it in her own blood. "I've always been an individualist", she says laughingly. The marriage ended a year later, but the couple has remained firm friends. Her professional career began with several independent films such as, Gathering Evidence and Oh No, Not Her. But it was her raw performance in the HBO docudrama, Gia that truly catapulted her into stardom.

Gia was the biography of the late supermodel Gia Marie Carangi. After the acclaim and accolades that followed that film, one would have thought that this star-on-the-rise would have the world at her feet. But not so, as she now recalls. "After Gia I felt like didn't have much to give, because she was so much like me, she just broke me and I didn't want to do and I knew it was going to make me; I kind of died with her, so I moved to New York and separated from my husband because he didn't want to go there; we both thought it was best for each other." Jolie stopped going to auditions and instead went to New York University to study writing and directing. It was a lonely existence. "I knew nobody in New York, and was suddenly away from having cappuccinos made for me every morning in a chair. There I was suddenly with a backpack. At that time I had only really done Hackers. A few kids in school thought they knew me, because it was right after. Then it was suddenly the Golden Globes, the TV movie Wallace, and then finally Gia came out, so it was that middle time when I was in the subways, by myself and fixing that damn heater and listening to that guy playing the saxophone. The first few nights, it was so romantic. By week three with the snow sliding around, falling asleep on the subway and hearing him, I realised how much I wanted to be in this business and just what a blessing it was to have a job."

The period of disillusionment, which followed Gia, gradually subsided. "I was so sad in New York. I love acting and I was so empty; I wanted so much to get back. You realise that you don't learn much in school when you had the opportunity. There you were sitting on a set with someone like John Frankenhiemer and you could have asked him a hundred things; then suddenly you're sitting in a class with a hundred people. God I'm stupid - I was right there. But it got me to learn a lot of different things, make a lot of student videos and get my hands on things; it also just made me want to jump back in. I missed acting so much. I felt I had learnt something, had replenished myself and had something new to offer."

That newness will be shown as we see much more of Jolie in the months ahead. After Bone Collector, one of the year's most anticipated (and controversial) films will be released, the intense Girl Interrupted, which also stars Winona Ryder and Whoopi Goldberg. Based on the bestselling book, the film chronicles the true story of a young woman in the 1960's who committed herself to a mental institute after being diagnosed with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), leading to an 18-month stay in which she gets to know her fellow patients, under the care and supervision of a psychiatrist (Vanessa Redgrave) and the ward's head nurse (Goldberg). Jolie plays an inmate that the actress describes "as a major sociopath." She shot the film straight after Bone Collector, and was relieved at the change of pace. "The character in Girl Interrupted was the polar opposite. This was somebody who was completely unfeeling, completely uninhibited; sociopaths become serial killers, so it was the other side of life." The actress relished making that crossover. "It was actually what I needed - to break out. Because I had been so still, and I've cared so much, and my heart's bled so much, I thought it was going to be very, very hard and many parts of it were, especially the end. The thing is, her impulses are completely free. So I found my impulses completely free, more than a little weird and I was completely open. Then you realise how much we are restricted. This character could sit at a table, could kiss somebody, throw something, spit on somebody and could just say whatever she wants. To me she was heartbreaking, and the essence of her was that she wanted somebody to talk to and be a friend. She wanted somebody to drop their guard and stop with the bull* and just admit whatever it is and be whatever you are and just stop pretending."

Advance word is, that this most unlikely of Hollywood stars could get an Oscar® nomination, but for this fiercely passionate individual, it's the work that counts "and what I'm passionate about." What she's not passionate about is the idea that she's being labelled Hollywood's hot new thing. "I feel scared of that all being about me. I would love it if people said: You are doing the best characters, you are doing great work. Being about me frightens me." While Jolie had a complicated relationship with her politically minded father, the relationship has changed, and the actress is ready to admit that she's learnt a lot from Jon Voight. "I've learnt from him that the search is never over, that it feels good to do good things and to do things of importance, that success in Hollywood and fame does not fulfil you and doesn't make you complete. I never thought: I'll do a hit movie and be really feeling good and everything would be OK; if anything, I'm trying to get my dad to get silly. He's taught me that you can be. I think a lot of people misinterpret me for not being serious, for not being kind, or whatever it is. If I've got tattoos or act crazy a little, people think that means I'm not caring, that I don't care about causes or don't do things that are important. I think he's gone the opposite, where he's almost SO focused on his causes and serious side of life, that we never see him be goofy. I think that we can finally find a balance in each other."

It also seems that Angelina Jolie has discovered her own brand of happiness and inner peace. "I feel good about myself, and just content."